The present study looks at the efficacy of 3 types of written corrective feedback on errors made by French-Speaking High School students writing in English. More than 100 students, taught by 5 different ... [more ▼]

The present study looks at the efficacy of 3 types of written corrective feedback on errors made by French-Speaking High School students writing in English. More than 100 students, taught by 5 different teachers in 3 different schools, participated in the study. Each participant was randomly assigned to a different type of written corrective feedback: underlining, direct correct or explanation. Each time the students wrote a text in their EFL class, I (the researcher) corrected it, selected 10 errors and asked the students to state whether they understood the error. If they understood the error, they were asked to correct and/or explain it, depending on their treatment group. I then analyzed the corpus of more than 2000 errors: all the errors were categorized and the uptake moves (students’ corrections and explanations) verified. Finally, I checked whether there was a positive correlation between error types, types of corrective feedback, and students’ uptake. [less ▲]

Summative writing assessment is an evaluative practice that aims, at least theoretically, to inform each student about his performance in that skill at a given time, and to help him to understand his ... [more ▼]

Summative writing assessment is an evaluative practice that aims, at least theoretically, to inform each student about his performance in that skill at a given time, and to help him to understand his errors so that he can make progress in his learning. In this article, we analyse summative writing assessment through various prisms. At the macro level, we discuss the reforms of the education system pertaining to assessment ; at the meso level, we target the assessment tools offered by the same education system, as well as the attention that may or may not be paid to remediation ; at the micro level, we deal with the issue of corrective feedback which students receive on their written production. By crossing these different sources (legal provisions, interviews, surveys, analysis of students’ annotated written production, etc.), we conclude that this practice may present major risks of inequality. [less ▲]

The second language curricula of Belgium’s French-speaking community demand that secondary school teachers administer two yearly summative assessments of five skills, which forces them to overlook ... [more ▼]

The second language curricula of Belgium’s French-speaking community demand that secondary school teachers administer two yearly summative assessments of five skills, which forces them to overlook formative assessments. [less ▲]

Corrective feedback, which consists in informing the student that he has made a linguistic error, is a teaching practice that is often used by second language teachers. Written corrective feedback takes ... [more ▼]

Corrective feedback, which consists in informing the student that he has made a linguistic error, is a teaching practice that is often used by second language teachers. Written corrective feedback takes different forms that range from the approximate localization of the error to the explanation of the rule that underlies the error that the student committed. In this case study, we wanted to compare the types of written corrective feedback that research has identified to those used by a foreign language teacher working in a French speaking secondary school. We also wanted to determine the quantity of errors that the students corrected while revising their written production with the help of the teacher, the researcher, their schoolmate and reference books. The results show, on the one hand, that the teacher mainly uses corrective feedback that can be rapidly delivered and, on the other hand, that the students manage to correct most errors, whatever the type of corrective feedback may be. These encouraging results may be attributed to the teaching activity, which allowed the teacher and the researcher to explain part of the corrective feedback that the students could not have understood by themselves. [less ▲]